Hey everyone,
I recently came across an ad for a local company here in Florida looking for an intern. I’m considering contacting them about it however, I am still an inexperienced ID student (finishing first year) and have not completely developed my skill set. Do you think it would be a bad idea to apply for the internship and explain in my cover letter that I am a newer student? or would this reflect badly on me professionally?
what do you think ?
Ryan
Do it. It’s all experience for you. Just to show you’re interested. If they see something interesting developing, they may keep you in mind the next time you apply. It’s never bad to start practicing resumes, cover letters, and interviews early.
Go for it if you have the time and chance. Internships are always a good thing, especially when you are new. Even the bad ones are good experience and as a student you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
In terms of your skill set, I think you should just be honest. Communicate to them what skills you have but don’t make any apologies.
The fact that you are just starting out does not mean that you could not be useful to the company.
Be confident and highlight what you can do instead of what you can’t.
Good luck!!
Agreed, go for it. Nothing to lose. Worst case, you get experience applying and interviewing, and some contacts for applying later. No need to make any excuses. Your portfolio will show what you can offer. Just go into it with whatever you can.
I started looking for internships after first year as well, probably way early and was perhaps underqualified, but learnt a lot about the process and was in a good position when looking for real job a few years later where firms already had an idea of where I was coming from and could see my improvement.
best of luck,
R
Definitely go for it. The one thing that I wished I had more of when I came out of university was real world experience. Having a good degree wont make you instantly desirable, you have to show that you can apply your knowledge in a commercial setting.
As R said, you will gain a lot of experience by going through the process and building a portfolio now will show you where the gaps are and what areas you really need to work on.
The worst thing that they can say is no 
Sounds good to me.
I think i will put some materials together relevant to this company and see what happens.
Thanks for the advice everyone!
cool!
Good luck and let us know how it went!!
You take on internships to become un-inexperienced, go for it!
Were you able to get an internship that first year (or soon after that first year … maybe during the summer?)?
Now that I think about it, my search may have been after second year instead of first. Hard to recall that long ago…
anyhow, I did get a job from the search (I was looking for a summer thing). I ended up at a design consultancy doing retail design (signage, POS, graphics, etc.) and was a great experience. Also scored interviews with almost all the other design consultancies in the city, and was helpful in following up with them years later (though I ended up going a different direction).
Either way the experience of putting a portfolio together, searching out firms (this was before it was easy to search on the internet - I did it though a phonebook and yellow pages CD-ROM that classified business by industry category, calling and sending letters by post), and presenting myself in person was great and for sure helped later.
R
I think these days is a lot different from R’s time. With email, most firms get tens of hundreds times more applicants than they did before, simply because it’s easy to BCC any email. And most places don’t want you to mail stuff in, so you get mingled in with the masses a lot more. It’s sad as we go digital, the way we can present ourselves gets limited (I love making my own portfolio case when I mail portfolios).
Look into your connections, as well. My freshman year I got an offer from a startup in SF, but they retracted their offer because they didn’t have enough money. So I was out of a job, but I was able to be connected to a group in Nokia through a friend’s mom, who saw my portfolio through my friend’s facebook, where I landed the internship. It’s good to put yourself out there.
110% do it.
Hello everyone,
Thanks for the words of wisdom i really appreciate it.
how did it work out?